Morrissey's lawyers want to distance the singer from hardline views on immigration . . . just as the Sun decides those views are perfectly respectable

"The article," Morrissey's solicitors informed the New Musical Express, "is from beginning to end an unadulterated and defamatory attack on our client's integrity and credibility, leaving the reader with a clear view that our client is a racist, holds racist views and is a hypocrite."

Such was the furious climax to the letter that threatened the NME with legal action over its feature highlighting remarks it attributed to the singer about the "enormous" price Britain pays for immigration, and how England had thrown away its identity.

One thing Morrissey's solicitors don't seem to have bargained for was that those opinions - which they were desperate to disown, which they deemed shockingly defamatory merely by association, which, indeed, were so unpalatable that they must be expunged from the record - those same opinions would make their client a hero.

I don't mean to the BNP, though no doubt they were delighted. I mean to the nation's favourite paper, the Sun, whose readers were afforded a "letters special" to express support and whose political editor, Trevor Kavanagh, came out as a fan. "Even those who have spent their lives fighting against discrimination and racism," he wrote in his column on 3 December, "know Morrissey has a point."

So good a point, in fact, that it bore elaboration far beyond anything the singer was said to have told the NME, begetting the sort of rant from Kavanagh that, if aired in a pub, might well cause drinkers to shuffle away in embarrassment.

Experts have predicted, he declared, that the British population will nearly double to 110 million over the next 70 years. (You and I may have thought the Government Actuary's Department actually said the population might rise from 60 to 108 million by 2081, but then again it might only creep up to 63 million.)

"Did you know," he went on, "there were more Somalis in Britain - up to 500,000 - than anywhere else on earth except Somalia? And eight out of ten of them are unemployed." And in case you were wondering, "this is not a racist point. Eight out of ten Nigerians, for instance, are in work." Not racist at all, then.

Pakistan is a hotbed for jihad, he continued: "By coincidence more than half of our Pakistanis are unemployed too, and, as France is now learning to its cost, the Devil makes work for idle hands."

And where Morrissey "may not have been inciting panic", Trevor Kavanagh jumped in. "We cannot wait until the streets of London and Birmingham are ablaze, like the streets of Paris, before we start talking about our own immigration explosion."

The NME, when it wrote about Morrissey, said his reported views sounded like the ravings of a rogue Tory MP, and I guess they had Enoch Powell in mind. But this stuff in the Sun is worse than Powell, a man who, after all, was thrown out by his party and left sulking on the sidelines for years.

Kavanagh is not on the sidelines; indeed, he probably has more influence on British public opinion than any other journalist. A veteran in his job, he is listened to by politicians and read closely by rival papers, so his influence goes far beyond the Sun's readers.

Even a couple of years ago the NME would have been right: such opinions would only have found their way into the mainstream press in occasional downpage pieces by rogue Tories, or in the depths of the letters columns.

But, today, it is apparently respectable for a man such as Kavanagh to ramp up fear about immigration, and to measure Poles and Nigerians against Somalis and "our" Pakistanis according to how far they - an undiscriminating, damning, contemptuous "they" - supposedly pose a threat to national security, to the health service, to housing and education. And it's also respectable for him, with his talk of blazing streets and ruthless, al-Qaeda-trained gangs, to stoke just the sort of panic that Morrissey's lawyers were so eager to distance their client from.

The right-wing papers never cease to wail about the threat from extremism. If they listen now, they can hear it ringing out loud and clear from their own pages.

Poor, poor Rupert

The minutes, recently released, of the encounter between Rupert Murdoch and the House of Lords communications committee make delightful reading. They met in New York in September, and to judge by the record the one-time Australian used the opportunity for a good whinge.

Britain is "anti-success", plagued by paranoia and ungrateful for the fortune he has spent "keeping the Times alive". Why, he lamented, he is even prevented from telling the editor of the Times what to print. As for broadcasting, the BBC has a stranglehold on the country that is so tight it affects even Sky staff. "Nobody at Sky listens to me," he cried, like some neglected maiden aunt. You really would need a heart of stone not to laugh.

Brian Cathcart is professor of journalism at Kingston University

Post your comment

Please note: you will need to login or register before you can comment on the website